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FeedGardens of Delight
Local designers dish on the latest trends and offer their best advice. Planting season’s just around the corner.
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Creating a landscape that compliments your home through a variety of vibrant plants can be a challenge. Knowing what, where and how to plant is the key, which is why enlisting the help of a professional landscape designer can smooth the process.
Designers thrive on developing a custom area that fits the client’s needs and desires.
“Some people are not into the outdoors, so they only want it looking good from the inside looking out,” says Beth Hearn, director of operations at Blue Heron Landscape & Design in Parsonsburg, Maryland. “A lot of clients want to be out in their yards. They want a place where they can have a glass of wine, a place where they can pick flowers.”
No matter your preference, local designers have come across some popular planting trends that could make your landscape shine spring into fall. The time to plan is now, so if you’re doing it yourself…
A Rose is Sometimes More Than a Rose
With their striking colors and big hips, roses have never lost their appeal, but planted in the wrong areas, they can become infested with pests and fungus.
Enter the popular Knockout rose, a large shrub bred to be resistant to pest and disease, so they require little maintenance, says Rodney Robinson, principal of Rodney Robinson Landscape Architects in Wilmington. Those characteristics make the Knockout rose an ideal planting for this area. With blooms in pink, red and yellow, the roses bloom continually from June to early fall.
“You’re almost assured to have beautiful rose colors and beautiful foliage,” Robinson says.
The Flower Carpet rose is also resistant to disease and pests. This ground cover rose has a glossy leaf and blooms in white, pink, red, yellow and coral. The Flower Carpet leafs out four weeks earlier than other roses and also blooms earlier. Mass plantings will give your garden a deep soaking of color, says Christian Tauber, landscape designer for Old Country Gardens in Wilmington. 
Native Plants
With the green movement surging and environmental awareness sweeping the nation, more native plants are sprouting in local gardens. Plants that have been growing naturally in a particular area since before European settlement provide nourishment to local wildlife such as birds, as well as insects that support the ecosystem. Allowing all species to flourish means more beauty through flora, as well as fauna.
Native plants have a great advantage over their exotic counterparts: Because they’re uniquely adapted to the environment and climate, they’re easy to care for. “They don’t require the vast quantity of watering that some plants need,” Hearn says.
Among the natives that can give your garden a natural look are river birch (Betula nigra), American holly (Ilex opaca), winterberry (Ilex verticillata), summersweet (Clethera alnafolia), Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina) and cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea). 
Nighttime Gardens
A calming garden can make the backyard an idyllic escape from everyday troubles, or an ideal spot for entertaining guests. Hearn says the light colors and fragrances of a nighttime (or moonlight) garden make for a relaxing, charming outdoor destination.
“We’ll do a lot of things that bloom white and really stand out in the evening with the moonlight,” she says.
Flowers such as angel’s trumpet, moonflower and azaleas glow in the moonlight. Add fragrance with rosemary, lavender or thyme. “It’s nice to plant fragrant creeping thyme along paths or seating areas so the scent is released as you walk across the plants,” she says.
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